Flashpoints
by Ryan PM
Summary: Snapshots and moments from the points of view of all eight characters and their companions. Multiple pairings. Individual chapters may be rated M for excessive violence. Current flashpoint: Elara Dorne has second thoughts about Havoc's commander...
1. Right-Zahn

_One- POV: Agent, chiss, Ral'zah'nuruodo. Cipher Nine come to a realization that will change his character forever..._

_Setting: End of Act Two. Spoilers up until that point, so do not read if you don't want to be spoiled._

**Right- Ral'zah'nuruodo**

The serum burned through his veins, and in the distance, Watcher X's voice echoed...

_"Your mind is now your own..."_

Ral'zah'nuruodo had never been religious. He was a man of pragmatism and logic, and even had difficulty listening to some of the inane prattle Jedi and Sith went on about. Yet when he opened his eyes and found that he could _see_ again, and felt no claw in his mind, no ghost of a presence with a hand clamped over his throat, he almost felt like weeping because he felt something approaching rapture.

His body chilled as the serum worked, his mind icing over nearly painfully and he bent to his knees, holding his head in his hands. "Force," he breathed, because it seemed the only thing large enough to quantify his relief. He looked at his hands, deep blue and calloused from punches and rifle stocks and knife handgrips. He looked at the ground of the small laboratory, dusty and rusted over for many years. He looked at his boots, dirtied and worn.

No voice in his head. No Ardun Kothe in his brain, twisting his thoughts and will. He was free. _Zahn_ was _free_.

He looked up and saw _her..._

Somehow, at this desperate hour, it seemed right, that the first person he recognize be Kaliyo. She peered down at him with her signature scowl, gray skin wrinkling around her eyes as they became slits in wariness. She didn't trust him, yet. Maybe she never would, because she was smart. She was always smart, smarter than him, it seemed.

In fact, he reflected privately, Kaliyo had been right along all, about everything.

About Keeper. About the Sith. About _Intelligence_.

A word, slipping from his lips like the water of his thoughts. "Kaliyo," he murmured.

Her response was harsh and strong. It always was. "What are you doing?" the Rattataki demanded.

Zahn opened his mouth, trying to say what he needed to say. How wrong he was. How right _she_ was. How he should have listened to her. At once, everything he had yearned to state while brainwashed came to the forefront of his mind, then died when it touched his tongue.

He didn't say, "Kaliyo, I was brainwashed this whole time. Keeper did it."

He didn't say, "I've been forced to do dirty work for Kothe."

He didn't say, "My mind has been enslaved for the past two months. How's yours?"

Instead, Zahn said quietly, "You were always right, Kaliyo." It seemed to sum everything up, put into words an encyclopedia of everything he had learned and experienced.

Because it was her, he knew she would understand. And she did; she didn't place a hand on his shoulder, or nod gently, or give him a reassuring smile. She replied snidely, "Of course I was, Agent. Now get up. We're killing daylight."

But something flashed in her eyes, something sacred and absolute and intuitive, and Zahn knew without a doubt that Kaliyo understood and did not want to discuss it further. The implications were immense; perhaps she had always suspected his brainwashing but not said anything, for doing so would compromise herself. Maybe she had always known Zahn better than he gave her credit, and detected his slighter abnormalities.

Maybe she had just resolved to watch over him, quietly, like she always did.

She turned away, looking out the door to the lab, checking for patrols of Hutt personnel, and Zahn stared.

It was odd, the feeling in his chest. New. Wild, but pure. He knew, then, that he loved her. Inescapably. Utterly. Completely.

He didn't say that. It was not their way. Instead he _did_ stand, and he _did_ grip his blaster with renewed determination. He locked eyes with her when she turned, and grinned. "Just needed a moment to catch my breath," he excused.

She inclined her head, gave him a dark wink. "Great. I say we go find Kothe and shove his lightsaber where it doesn't shine."

_Oh, Kaliyo..._ "I concur," he nodded. "One thing, though." She stopped in her exit. "I get to do the shoving."

And Kaliyo smiled.

**(O)(O)(O)**


	2. Dirt-Eluvien

_Two- POV: Sith Inquisitor, miraluka, Eluvien. She had always been treated as a slave. She could hardly remember where she had come from before. All her senses seemed dulled. Enslaved, as she was. Even food didn't taste anymore; everything tasted like dirt..._

_Setting: Prior to the Sith Inquisitor prologue, during her captivity in slavery. No real spoilers to speak of._

**Dirt- Eluvien**

The dirt tasted sour, as it always did, though not because it was dirt but because she had been kicked into a mouthful of it.

The pain in her back ached and stung sharply from where Rorke's boot had impacted her spine, and Eluvien gritted her teeth, clenching her fists in the sand, and bent her head, a wave of rage and misery washing over her body like a corrupted ocean.

"Get up, _slave_."

Slave. Her name, as far as most were concerned. And she did get up. She always did, even when they knocked her back down again.

The hot sun that orbited Korriban beat down on her back and shoulders, the rags she wore doing little to protect her skin from its rays. Distantly, she wondered what the sun was called, or if it had even been named, but then Rorke was over her, his shadow fearsome and malevolent rather than welcome.

"Get moving," he growled, his scarred, ugly face stinking with something left in his beard. Eluvien flinched, but shuffled to the side, sliding into place with her fellow slaves. There were a dozen of them there, ready to start the march to their shack after the day's labor. They all shared it, and they all knew the way, but they were escorted nonetheless.

It wasn't as if they had the strength to escape, she thought to herself. They hadn't the food or water, but the Sith were nothing if not consistent with their cruelty.

A whip snapped through the air and Eluvien winced, but the crack wasn't on her back, but on another's, a man named Dallo who stumbled and almost fell. A new scar adorned his bare flesh and he groaned, but managed to keep himself upright. Had she the energy, she might have felt relief for him.

As it was, she barely felt glad that it wasn't her that had been whipped.

Rorke's aura in the Force pulsed an angry red; he was in a particularly foul mood today, and Eluvien hoped that the march to their shack would be quick. The sooner she could get to her corner, the better. She tugged at the wrap that covered her eyes, scratching beneath the dirtied cloth, only to have her hand yanked to the sky, her entire body almost lifted from the ground. She yelped, kicked her feet, but the soldier who had grabbed her arm was much larger and scowled at her.

"Don't be touching that dirty alien part of yours, _freak_," he warned. She whimpered, her arm straining to hold her weight, and he shook her around a bit as if she was a doll. Eluvien gasped, agony wracking through her limb, and when he finally let her go she fell to the dusty ground again and inhaled more dirt, tasted it.

It was the single taste she had most familiarity with, she suspected.

Her palms scraped against the harsh sand, carving smaller cuts into her flesh. Through the wrapping covering her eyes, Eluvien could see the glow of her droplets of blood on the ground. She was used to seeing that, too.

She sniffled back a breath and managed to stand, almost reaching out for one of her fellow slaves, but stopping herself in time as she felt Rorke peer at her, felt his anger spike through the Force. She wrapped her tiny arms around herself, huddled away from the soldier who had shaken her.

He moved on. He was used to her kind, and she was used to his. It was strange, the accord she had reached. Still she emotionally shook with tremors of pain and sadness, but blocked herself from it all the same.

Back in line with her fellows, the march began, out of the canyon they had been digging in and into the shadows of the barracks. They were kept an entire kilometer away from the Academy, to avoid "tainting" the place with their impurity Eluvien stared at the ground the entire time, to better avoid any interaction with Rorke or his men.

The slaves shuffled. The soldiers whipped. It was normal. And horrifying, still, to this day, in some distant way.

Kicked, cajoled, and otherwise forced into the barracks, a gray slab of metal and plasteel that barely had air conditioning, the slaves were shut inside, the room spare save for a few cots and a shared toilet. Waiting for them was a collection of simple foods: a few hunks of bread, a jug of water, and a few muja fruit.

The other eleven slaves descended on the pile of food and water. The Sith believed them to be vermin, but contrary to that belief her fellow prisoners and outcasts sat in a small circle around the pile and started tearing bread to each other, sharing what little they had. There were no windows in their barracks, she suspected, to prevent this truth from coming out, from stirring any kind of sympathy in a weak guardsman.

In the end, she supposed, it didn't matter.

Eluvien slid to her corner of the barracks, with her flat cot; it had been dubbed hers a long time ago, when they had come to Korriban some months back; she didn't know exactly how long, because she had no clocks or calendars to study. She preferred to curl there, with her back to the wall, sometimes pressing her flesh against the cool metal to soothe the wounds she had received over the course of the day. Tonight, she sat her back against it, holding her shoulder in her hand and rubbing it gently, trying to ease the pitiful muscle and joint there.

Even blind, she couldn't help but notice Dallo's shining blue aura as he scooted near her. The large man dwarfed her in size, even with their malnourished state, but he looked at her with kind, soft eyes. Wordlessly, he handed out a piece of bread for her.

She nodded, too tired to smile. Or perhaps she just didn't care to, anymore. Perhaps she had learned that smiling was a waste of time. Still, she took the bread and waiting until he had scooted back to the others, where they muttered to themselves, trying to maintain some semblance of humanity or civility in their lives, where they could talk among themselves as equals, even if they were equals at the bottom of the Empire.

Eluvien took a bite of the bread. It tasted like dirt, just like everything else.

**(O)(O)(O)**


	3. Mad-Elara Dorne

_Three- POV: Elara Dorne, Companion to the Trooper. Elara had begun to wonder if Havoc Squad was really where she belonged, as she was certain that her commander was mad..._

_Setting: Immediately after the Trooper completes Taris' class story and moves onto the Bonus Series. No real spoilers except for the fact that Elara is a companion._

**Mad- Elara Dorne**

The blaster bolt whizzed over her head, and Elara sank herself deeper into the mud, staining her golden hair and marring her pale skin. Modesty had been left a long time ago, somewhere rather _between_ stepping into raider territory and being shot at; the exact location was a bit of a bothersome detail she didn't quite feel like dwelling on.

To summarize, she was squashing herself into the mud and hoping to the Force that something would happen to give her a break in the constant firing. "Bloody pirates," she growled to herself, and gripped her blaster pistol tighter, edging her head out from behind the sandbags and cursing in Huttese when a sizzling shot burned the spot where her eye had _almost_ been.

Across from her, Jorgan was in no better shape, having been shot in the shoulder already and gritting his sharp teeth as he bore the pain. Still, he had tilted his cannon over the rock that served as his barricade and was firing steadily back into the squadron of pirates.

Elara wondered how they had ever managed to get into this mess; Taris' pirates gangs were hardly organized, and the nine they were facing now were no different. Her trained mind took one second to come up with the answer.

"Bloody Leftenant!" she snarled, and fired blindly over her cover. "Sergeant!" she called to Jorgan. "Where is he?"

The Cathar made a sound that was a cross between a roar and grunt of irritation, something odd and alien to Elara's ears. "Don't ask me!" he snapped, and hurled a spare grenade over his rock; it landed to the side of the pirates and exploded, spraying shrapnel over the place and doing, in essence, nothing to help their position. Not that Elara could blame him, with his wounded shoulder and all.

Their _esteemed_ commander's plan had been to whistle to the pirates as they approached, then disappear into the shrubs and trees almost immediately, leaving his sergeants to weather the assault that was soon brought to bear on them. Elara hadn't had time to express her dissatisfaction with the idea, and instead had been forced into cover almost immediately; the pirates were entrenched, on higher ground and have ten guns where they had two.

For the third time that day (or was it the fourth?) she wondered how command of Havoc squad had fallen to such a...

A portion of her sandbag exploded from where a particularly hot blaster bolt burned through it and she flinched; her light armor wouldn't protect her well from a direct shot, not if their guns had made short work of Jorgan's-

Something leapt from the tree above, a heavy shape that thudded into existence behind the pirates. A few turned, but by that time Elara had already stuck her head out and watched Havoc Squad's commander bash his rifle into the skull of one and punch a sharp gauntlet blade into the throat of another.

She narrowed her eyes, but set aside her anger and fired into the spine of another pirate, her aim precise and perfect as ever.

Their commander ducked a retaliatory swipe, then grabbed the man who had swung for him and held him as a human shield; said shield dutifully soaked up a blaster shot, and then their commander fired his own rifle (one-handed, the show off) into the pirate who had fired in the first place. It was almost dreadfully confusing, had Elara not been versed in the art of warfare and been forced to concede that their commander was, in fact, not _bad_ at his job.

She mentally summarized that five pirates were dead. The other four were taken down from a sweep of Jorgan's cannon, a few shots of which skipped the ground near their commander's foot; he yelped and Elara could _hear_ his narrowed eyes beneath his helmet. "What was _that_ for?" he demanded.

For his part, Jorgan calmly rolled his wounded shoulder, checked the power cell on his cannon, and shrugged. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about, sir."

"We _got_ them all, didn't we?"

"Of course, sir."

Leftenant Ellyon tilted his head just so. "You're mad at me."

"Of course not. That would be unprofessional," Jorgan countered in complete deadpan.

Elara had no such reservations. "I... Why I... I've _never_ seen such brash and _wasteful_ tactics in my career!" she spouted hotly, staring down her commander. She had shouted at Imperial officers and a Sith, once (though that was another story), and one hotshot wouldn't intimidate her into silence. "Sir, I really _must_ protest against such actions-"

Leftenant Ellyon held up an armored hand, and removed his helmet, revealing his tanned face, dark, regulation-cut hair, and the pair of optical covers that served to shield his eyes from the world. The miraluka smirked, an _infuriating _expression that Elara _already_ knew would be the end of her.

"Now, now, Sergeant," he chastised. "Remember that official complaints can be filled out via the right _form_."

Now he was mocking her. Her glare intensified. "They _can_," she allowed. "But-"

"And right now we're wasting daylight," he acknowledged, and reset his helmet, still smirking, the cocky bastard. "No time to waste." He cocked his head playfully again. "And what is time, Jorgan?"

The Cathar sighed heavily, putting his free hand to his temple. "Time is money," he muttered.

Elara's eyes boggled. "_WHAT?!_" But Ellyon was already walking ahead through the brush, chopping through it like he was some cowboy explorer on a special mission, when in fact only one of those three qualifiers was true. She turned to Jorgan. "Please tell me that I misheard you."

Jorgan shook his head rather miserably. "Time is money," he repeated. "It's his motto, or something. Made me repeat it on Coruscant. Now I'm stuck with it. Ugh." Nursing his shoulder, he trudged off after their commander.

And Elara stared, suddenly wondering if she'd have been better off back at the SAR command post instead of in Havoc Squad.


End file.
